Identity and Biology

Written for seminar 5/26/12

After reading today's newspaper account of Liz Warren's struggle with her identity or biology ("I'm 1/32 Native American") I was reminded of a long-standing question from my youth. I had observed, as a young ethno-demographer, that almost all the Italians I knew had much darker skin than anyone else except neighborhood Negroes. In fact, I had darker skin than one of my Negro friends, Junior Emerson. As I matured and read more widely (the NY Daily News) I discovered that almost all Southern Italians were darker than those from the Florence area in the North. How could that be? Was Sicily closer to the sun? Were Sicilians and Barese (that's my family from Bari in the south on the Adriatic coast) too poor to afford sun screen or sun hats? No, the question required deeper understanding.

It wasn't until my college days and my first course in biology when I learned of Gregor Mendel and theories of plant genetics and its link to human genetics. The plot thickened when I took a medieval history course and learned about the Mamaluke people from North Africa. Yipes! In my neighborhood we called kids that we thought were dummies "mamalukes." How can that be? Later in the history course I read about a Sultan named Mingooch. Holy shit! My father's nickname was Mingooch. What the hell is going on?

If Liz Warren has identity without biology, I have biology without identity and I am totally confused. Am I really African American (1/36?). Could I have gone to Harvard with Liz Warren instead of Cortland State? Has my career at Purdue been limited by the missed opportunities enjoyed by Warren, as self-identified Native American? Should I tell my kids that they may be descendents of Sultan Mingooch? Would that do them any good?

I am also saddened by the fact that I may have mislead you members of the seminar, who have white identity and who may start to think of me in a new way. I think that we all owe a debt of gratitude to Liz Warren for coming out and telling the world that she was one of the first Native Americans at Harvard. Who knows, Purdue may have to acknowledge that I was the first African American to get a PhD in sociology from Purdue, and my life will be used to counteract the bad publicity from the Leon Higgenbottom years.

                                                                                                      RP